Preschool to 12th Grade: A 15-Year Journey

When considering the beginning of the educational journey at Harrisburg Academy, we look at where the journey begins rather than when. Everything we plan for our students and implement for them starts first by thinking about our school's mission. This mission is focused on only one outcome — preparing our students to be successful adults. We accomplish this by differentiating our teaching methods, providing knowledge to prepare them academically for the challenges of the 21st century, and modeling behavior that will enable them to develop their own character, built on solid integrity.

In other words, the focus of this 15-year experience is the individual child and the “whole child,” at that. At every point along a student’s journey at the Academy, we want to know each child, what motivates him or her, and what his or her passions and aspirations might be. By understanding who each child is and how he or she develops along the journey, we can best attune our instruction to that student and his or her social and emotional growth. It is for this reason that we continually update and amend our curriculum across all divisions including forward-thinking programs such as lab science in Early Childhood and the Centers in Upper School. By differentiating our instruction, we are best able to encourage students to think analytically, creatively, and innovatively. This is the kind of “deep” thinking we choose to develop at our school, and this is why our instruction will never become repetitive practice for the purpose of taking standardized tests which are scaled to unsatisfactory low means.